Learning Science through Comic Books, A List

Reading textbooks gives me scary flashbacks of my days as an undergraduate (about 2 weeks ago). I did a little research on the internet and supposedly there are these things kids are calling “light reads” that make reading fun again. Comic books/Graphic novels are the pinnacle of fun, so I put together a quick list of illustrated reading to salivate the mind in absence of raw textbook facts.

Jay Hosler is on fire with biology themed comics. The Sandwalk Adventures is a tale of two mites living on a eyebrow follicle of Charles Darwin. Comics Worth Reading has a nice review. Also check out Clan Apis, Hosler’s comic about honey-bee life and insect society.

“Two-Fisted Science, a Xeric Award-winning and Eisner nominated original trade paperback, features true stories from the history of science. Some are serious, some are humorous, and most are a bit of both. Scientists highlighted include physicists Richard Feynman, Galileo, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg, but you’ll find a cosmologist and some mathematicians inside as well.” -GT Labs

Logicomix is a “brilliantly illustrated tale of reason, insanity, love and truth recounts the story of Bertrand Russell‘s life”. This novel comes off as one of the more mature reads of this list, so I’m pretty excited for this comic to be released later this year.

6. Matt Fraction’s The Five Fists of Science

Okay, you might not learn a lot from The Five Fists of Science, but who can argue against a steam-punk comic featuring Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain fighting against an evil Thomas Edison?